Well, the mystery has been explained this morning as to why there are so many babies and small children in Richmond. After all, they purchased thirty-five porta-cribs, and now they have to have children—have a reason for all these porta-cribs.
I came to the fellowship itself a few months ago to speak, and I was amazed at how many little children they have. How many are here? You must have—yeah, they must have a hundred. And they have 120 people meeting, so you get the idea. Unbelievable. This is a new tribe being formed right in front of our eyes.
It is not that way up in Huntington, where I come from. Of course, you all know Huntington. That is Jerry Cooney’s hometown, Billy Joel’s hometown. Oh, that is a famous place. We even have Lance come by and speak once in a while.
The reason is that Huntington, back in the Revolutionary days, was a Tory stronghold. They actually had a regiment of people faithful to King George. So Lance comes up every year just to meet with the old veterans there.
Whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
As we press on in our Christian lives, we need hope. It becomes more precious to us, does it not? To realize that in our hearts there is that fire of hope. As we come to the end of ourselves, and as we come to impasses in our Christian life, somehow the Shepherd comes alongside of us.
Often, through the Word of God—as it says here, through the encouragement of Scripture—this hope is kindled again and fanned into flame. How precious is our Shepherd as He comes and takes care of our wants.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.
The prophets who wrote in earlier times came alongside the people of God and brought comfort and encouragement. They stirred them up again and rekindled the hope that was buried within them.
For the past few times, and again this morning, we have been looking at prophetic messages in the Old Testament along the lines of the encouragement that came through them. The Shepherd of the souls of the children of God brought His precious Word to them.
Over the first two days, Monday and Tuesday, we shared primarily how the Lord came alongside individuals. Habakkuk was struggling with faith, standing before the Lord and praying. The answer was not coming; the problems still existed. Then the Lord came alongside with His Word, with His revelation, and Habakkuk was restored. He broke out in a song.
Then yesterday we looked at Elijah, who, as a veteran soldier and a prophet faithful to the Lord, came to the end of himself. He wanted to die. He had nothing more to live for. What good was it to go on in the world?
Then the Lord’s Word came alongside him and helped him get beyond the impasse. We get to those places, do we not? Human beings come around and try to counsel us, but we are at an impasse. If God does not come alongside and somehow fan us back into flame, renew us, and recover us, there is no going on. The Shepherd came alongside.
I am amazed at my own insensitivity. I confessed to you the first day that I do not really feel I have a shepherd’s heart. I have begun to see, because of my own life and vulnerability, that Jesus is the great Shepherd of my soul. I share these Scriptures in the light of seeing this precious Shepherd, our Lord Jesus.
I was amazed yesterday, after I shared the message about Elijah, how many sisters were at the end of themselves. I confess my insensitivity in not realizing how many precious sisters are just at the end of themselves. Their husbands are probably frustrated and pouring out their frustrations on the sisters. At least, these are the people who responded to me.
Some brothers came up as well and said that what I had shared had helped them. But we see how much we need the Shepherd to restore us. Some of the veterans who came up to me yesterday and poured out their hearts were not old veterans; they were young sisters. But they had been walking with the Lord and had come to impasses.
Many of them, of course, could testify that Jesus is faithful. He recovers, rekindles, renews, and gives them hope again.
This morning, I want us to look at an overview, more or less, of the book of Haggai. I would like you to turn there, please. Page 894. I want us to read together the first chapter of Haggai.
There are a lot of pages rustling. A lot of index-looking right here. Unfortunately, it is not alphabetical, if you notice.
The first two days, I shared how our Lord, as the Shepherd, by His Word came alongside individuals. Now, can you believe—do you have faith to believe—that our Shepherd can lead a whole flock? That He can come alongside a flock of God’s people and restore them?
This is even more miraculous. Think of the Lord dealing in my life and recovering me, and then take your life and see how He touches and restores you. Now take a mob of such people. This is some Shepherd. He must have some rod, some staff, and some wisdom to recover the people of God.
Today we will look at a prophetic Word that came alongside the people of God and restored them.
Beginning with Haggai 1:1:
In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet unto Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, saying,
Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the Lord’s house should be built.
Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet, saying,
Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your ceiled houses, while this house lieth waste?
Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.
Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.
Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord.
Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the Lord of hosts. Because of My house that lieth waste, while ye run every man to his own house.
Therefore over you the heaven is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit.
And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the grain, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labor of the hands.
Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him; and the people did fear before the Lord.
Then spake Haggai the Lord’s messenger in the Lord’s message unto the people, saying, I am with you, saith the Lord.
And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work in the house of the Lord of hosts, their God,
In the four and twentieth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.
Father, we now ask that You would reveal Your shepherd love to us as we consider this perspective of being a flock, companies of believers. We thank You for Your restoring Word. We ask that You might come alongside, restore us, and help us.
May You take the anointing of Your precious Spirit, Your teaching Spirit, and burn within our hearts the truth of the Word of God. Help us, Lord. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Haggai the prophet was raised up as the prophet of recovery, or one of the two prophets of recovery, when the children of Israel came back from Babylon. Zechariah was the other one. I am not going to share on him this morning because I do not understand the visions in Zechariah. Haggai is simpler, so I thought I would talk about him this morning.
We have read the first chapter, but before we accuse these people of God of being materialists and building their own mansions down on the river, it would be good for us to look at their actual circumstances and see the situation into which Haggai was raised up to speak.
If you turn to the book of Ezra—may cause you a little problem again—chapter 1, we find the story, the history, into which Haggai spoke.
Of course, you know that the children of Israel, because of their idolatry and unfaithfulness, were taken away into captivity. They were deported to Babylon. The leaders, the people of stature in Jerusalem, were all deported to Babylon, carried off, made slaves, and put in different cities around the Babylonian Empire. Seventy years of captivity took place.
Then we find the miracle of God. He moved by His Spirit. It was a very sovereign thing He did. There was some prayer in the background. We know that Daniel, even in Babylon, was praying that the Lord’s children could return to the land.
But, in any case, we open the book of Ezra and see this amazing, surprising move of the Spirit of God in Ezra 1:1. In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the Word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia. He sent the proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it in writing.
In effect, Cyrus said, “Send the children back to Jerusalem to build the temple.” Now that is a miracle. This man was an unbeliever. He did not know who the Lord was, but something caused fear in his heart—respect and reverence for the Lord—and he sent these captives back to Jerusalem to build the temple of the Lord.
What a stirring of the Spirit. You know that God has done something when He totally initiates it like that. I imagine most of the children of Israel were quite surprised. Only those faithful ones who had been praying and praying behind the scenes knew that this was a fulfillment, as it says, in order to fulfill the word spoken by Jeremiah.
God took His Spirit and stirred Cyrus. Oh, that is a wonderful event. Cyrus brought out this proclamation, and about 50,000 Jews responded. There were probably a few million, but only 50,000 really responded.
Do you know why these 50,000 responded? Was it because they had nothing else to do or wanted new scenery? In the end, it says that God stirred their spirits to return.
Then rose up the heads of fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, even all whose spirit God had stirred to go up to build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem.
— Ezra 1:5
The Spirit stirred up some people’s hearts, and they felt, “We want to serve the Lord. We need to return to Jerusalem.” For whatever reason, they had a heart for the Lord. Maybe they had a heart for the law; maybe they had a heart for Jerusalem. But the Lord stirred their spirit, and they said, “We have got to go back.”
About 50,000 went back to Jerusalem from Babylon. Some had gotten comfortable in Babylon and even had a means of living. But they went back to Jerusalem with nothing for themselves. They had plenty of gold, but it was gold given from the treasury. Cyrus gave gold, including some of the things Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple. It was all for the temple.
These people had pocket change as they headed back across the desert to Jerusalem. When they got back there, they had nothing. Just imagine how the Spirit raised them up. What sacrificial hearts! They had to build shanties, put stones together, and build makeshift establishments.
It was a great sacrifice—hauling the children over there with no means of employment. Jerusalem was just a city of rubble: perhaps a couple of animals living in the city, perhaps a couple of squatters, some vagabond people. There was nobody there. It was a total wreck.
These people, moved by the Spirit of God, went back there and said, “We want to serve the living God. We are dedicated to building the temple.”
They were there for about six months, and they made their first move. They built the altar. You know, the old brazen altar stood outside the temple. They built that altar and began to sacrifice.
It took them seven months to get to that point. They sacrificed animals they had brought back from Babylon, and they used up about all those animals in sacrifices to God. What sacrificial people! They had hearts for God. They gave everything they had.
They sacrificed and sacrificed, and they were afraid to do it because the Samaritans surrounded them like Indians, checking them out every day. They were afraid they were going to get killed. Zerubbabel was no big shot in Jerusalem. He was governor of these people, but that was not much. You would not want to get voted into something like that. The Spirit of God had to raise you up to be governor of those folks.
They sacrificed and sacrificed, but did not build. Finally, after two years, they decided, “Look, let us lay the foundation. People cannot see the foundation so well. Let us start there.”
God gave them grace, and they laid the foundation. They found stones and laid them in. It was a laborious task, but they did it, and they felt God was in it. As a matter of fact, they began to get excited.
They had barely gotten started, but they got the foundation laid. They were sacrificing animals on that altar to God, and they felt it was pleasing to God. When they got that foundation built, they went out and rented some band instruments from the high school band. They got the Levites together, put on some sort of smocks or whatever they had, stood in line, and began to sing.
It was as if the Spirit of God came upon them. They began to sing, worship, celebrate, shout, and cry. Some people were crying because they saw this pitiful foundation. They remembered the good old days of Solomon’s beautiful temple.
But some were crying because they were so happy that they could do God’s will. “I know we just built this little foundation, and it does not look exactly like Solomon’s day, but praise God anyway. Hallelujah!” They were playing their guitars or whatever instruments they had—I forget the instrument names from those days. They were singing and shouting, having a celebration. The altar was in, and the foundation was in.
The neighbors heard the noise. The party was too loud. Their Samaritan neighbors were a mixed group of people. When people were deported in those days, they were shifted around. Some may have been Phoenicians dragged down by the Babylonians; some may have been Persians or Syrians. There was a mixture of people living in Samaria.
They had heard about this religion of the Lord. They came along, and I think they probably wanted to get in on the party. Something really great was going on, so they said, “We want to help you build this temple.”
Now Zerubbabel got into trouble. He said, “No. You cannot build with us. We are God’s children. We have been commissioned to do this, and we are going to do it.”
Those Samaritans got so mad that they wrote a poison-pen letter to the king back in Babylon. Unfortunately, Cyrus had passed away—or I do not know what happened to him—but Artaxerxes was now the king. If you have a name like Artaxerxes, you are just not going to be cooperative anyway.
The Samaritans wrote a letter and said, “Listen, these rebellious people are rebuilding the city and rebuilding the walls. As soon as they build those walls, they are not going to listen to you anymore. You had better check it out.”
Artaxerxes looked into the records. They pulled out scrolls that showed that, in the history of the children of Israel, they had always been a snare and rebellious. It was hard to get money out of them and things like that.
So Artaxerxes did what any good king would do. He sent the messenger back with a posse. Look at the end of Ezra 4. You get the idea.
Then, as soon as the copy of king Artaxerxes’ letter was read before Rehum, and Shimshai the scribe, and their companions, they went in haste to Jerusalem unto the Jews, and made them to cease by force and power.
Then ceased the work of the house of God which is at Jerusalem; and it ceased unto the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia.
— Ezra 4:23-24
Now, I do not know about you, but it sounds to me like they had a pretty good excuse for stopping the temple work. A posse—guys with arms—showed up in Jerusalem and said, “Look, the king of the whole kingdom says quit. You see the arms?”
What did the children of Israel have? A couple of hoes? A couple of ornamental swords that the priests had? What could they do? They were circumstantially overwhelmed, and they stopped building the temple.
What would you recommend? Would you say they stopped working because they were materialists? I would say they stopped working because they were survivalists. They did what any good, red-blooded Judean would do: they circled the wagons.
We all know this from cowboy and Indian movies. When the Indians come around throwing their spears and shooting their arrows, you circle the wagons. Every man is stuck behind his wagon. It is a matter of self-survival.
Sure, you are going to build your house. Do not get the idea that they were building luxurious homes. They were just trying to survive.
Before we go any further, I would like to challenge you at this point. Any people of God with a heart to build the house of God will, at some point, come to an impasse—a circumstantial overwhelm.
Make no mistake about it. If they had gone back and built a synagogue, no problem. The Jews had synagogues in Babylon. They could have gone back and built twenty-six of them in the city of Jerusalem, and nothing would have happened.
They could have gone back and built a ziggurat, a big structure up into the sky. They could have built high places around Judah. Nothing would have happened. They could have held religious parties. No problem. They probably could have rebuilt Jerusalem and not gotten into too much trouble.
But, uh-oh, they built the house of God. That was what was in their hearts. They wanted to be pleasing to God—to have an altar of sacrifice and a place for God to dwell among His people. This was the desire of their hearts, and circumstances came and overwhelmed them.
Brothers and sisters, I want to make a statement that comes out of conviction in my own soul. If you are dedicated in your heart to building the house of God—not just a church, a synagogue, a religious place, or a group prayer meeting, but the house of God—circumstances have a funny way of overwhelming you.
Let us take note of the fact that the enemy is around. Is that not right? Like the Samaritans, the enemy is around. There are infernal strategies and devilish confederacies of evil circumstances bent on destroying the work.
When we try to build the house of God, it is incredible. Divisions pop up among the saints. It never happened when we were just a happy group of people meeting in somebody’s home. Why these sudden divisions? Sickness begins to afflict people left and right. Unemployment suddenly strikes us. We lose valued people through death or other circumstances.
Perhaps even the government says, “You cannot meet like that in the home anymore. It is not zoned that way.” You find yourself saying, “Oh, my goodness, what are we going to do now?”
You get accused of being a cult, or some scandal breaks out and you are implicated in the whole thing. If you are following in some new and living way before the Lord, you get accused of being a weird group. The name spreads all over town: “Do not go to those weirdos’ house, if you know what is good for you.”
You cannot even tell how these things got started. But there are problems within, too. The wolves suddenly appear right within the group. Brother So-and-So, who was so smiley, turns out to be a wolf. False doctrine comes among God’s people—strange, false emphases driving people left and right away from the house of God.
Then there are subtler circumstances that overwhelm us—things we would initially call good. Who here dares say that having babies is not a mighty good thing? But I have seen having babies put some people almost under.
Buying houses is a great recreation. It is wonderful to buy a house. It gives you so many things to do. Good things. Do we not all need houses? Amen, brother.
Then there are job promotions. “Hey, we know God’s will is for you to become king of your company. So job promotion must be in God’s will”—especially when you see the paycheck increase. It might just take your soul.
But at first the job promotion is usually seen as a pretty good thing. “I have an opportunity to travel. I can take my family around. It is great.” The only problem is that when we are trying to build the house of God, these circumstances coincidentally join themselves together, circumstantially overwhelm us, and we cannot build the house of God.
Take some fellowship that really wants to be the house of God. Take all the things I have mentioned, and some others that you could come up with. Pull them all together, throw them in the pot, and they will overwhelm sincere people of God—people who have been raised up by the Spirit of God, called by the Spirit of God, sent out by the Spirit of God, and who began working by the Spirit of God.
It is incredible. We could stop this meeting right now and, for the rest of the morning, play a game: “Paul, can you top this circumstance?” We could start with the back row and get testimony of the incredible concurrence of events that absolutely halted the forward progress of the people of God.
The history of many companies of God’s people is one step forward and two steps back. “How can this be?” “Oh, you would not believe it. We were just starting to move, and three families left. It was all three brothers in responsibility.”
“Oh, we got going, and so-and-so got sick. Myrtle had twins, everybody was buying a house, and sixteen people got married that year. I do not know what happened, but please have us excused.” Good circumstances and bad circumstances—it is really something.
I would like to take a little shot, if I could. I believe we have a serious problem in the United States. One way the enemy gets to us is through this matter of affluence.
We need to confess that we are CUPs: Christian urban professionals. You know, yuppies are young urban professionals. That is slang. I know a lot of slang. I see people going, “What?” I call them CUPs: Christian urban professionals.
They are out for growth and affluence and dwellings. They want to be rich and serve the kingdom too. It is the most permissible and obvious flaw you can see among God’s people. It is permitted because I want to get rich, but do not you touch me, and I will not touch you. Let us be CUPs for Christ.
Am I just picking on your fellowship, or can we go over this room and admit that the most pervasive problem we have is what affluence is doing to us? Men have given their souls to the profits of their jobs. People have given their lives to the recreation and treats that come with affluence, the time that is consumed through affluence, and all these things circumstantially prevent us.
I am just trying to say, come on: is the Shepherd speaking to us about this? Maybe my mind has gotten a little perverted, but there is something in my mind that says, “Praise God,” when I hear somebody say—maybe a sister—“I was working at a job, and I felt like maybe I should—”
Immediately you say, “What? Sacrifice income?” Yeah, my heart goes, “Amen.” I have men working and women working. Look, I do not want to say that this is your particular life. I just want to say that I think we are all in it. I think we are all caught in it.
We just do not have time. Have you ever tried to get the brothers together? It is an incredible experience.
It would not bother me so much, except I still deal with young people occasionally. They make the mistake of thinking I am young, so they ask me into young people’s meetings. Young people are still on the threshold. Some of their hearts are still burning for the Lord.
I am particularly affected when I go among Chinese young people and speak to them. They have a real heart for the Lord. They want to serve God. I have seen, time after time and place after place, that some of the most gifted and talented ones come up to me, absolutely torn in their lives.
On the one hand, their parents expect them to take a profitable and high-caliber job. These are gifted children. I am talking about the young people who come to conferences and all go to Harvard and Cornell. They go to the best schools, become doctors and engineers, and are bright and talented.
You know they are gifted and clean-living. They are going to succeed, press on, and make it. But they say, “I know that, but I also know I am going to give myself to something that is going to start taking me away. What do I do? What do I do?”
I say, “Well, what choice do you have?” They say, “None. My parents say I must do this.” I suppose we WASPs like myself cannot really appreciate the cultural sense of obligation these Chinese young people have. They do what they are told by their parents, who are paying for their education and telling them what they must do.
Their parents want the best for their children, and that is what they are doing. “Now you must do this.” But it is not just a Chinese problem, is it? We saints who love the Lord raise our precious little children. We want the best for them. We try to send them through the best schools and get them into the best jobs, and sometimes they just lose their souls.
They accomplish great things for the world, and gifts are lost to the church. Is there something the Shepherd is trying to say? You feel it; you are here.
Circumstantial overwhelming can bring us all down. Sometimes it makes what we do just a game. So we circle the wagons, get ourselves into an impossible trap and an impossible condition, and the house of God cannot be built.
I do not know about your particular assembly. You may come from some established church somewhere. I do not know your personal condition. But I find that most groups where people have a heart to build get themselves to a corporate impasse. Unless the Shepherd can break something through, it just cannot happen.
Everybody is behind their wagon, chucking an occasional gospel arrow out, but nothing is happening. It is into that kind of circumstance that Haggai was raised up. Praise God for the living Word coming in the midst.
Ezra 5:1 tells us that the Lord raised up Zechariah and Haggai, the prophets. They began to prophesy to the people of God, and the people of God rose up and began to build the temple through the encouragement and ministry of Haggai and Zechariah.
Let us look a little more at the inside story. What did God say to His people who were caught in this circumstantial impasse? From the time they stopped under the duress of the Samaritans, with an official statement from the king, fifteen years had elapsed. They were still circling the wagons.
The Spirit began the work. The Spirit led the people there. These people had a heart for the Lord. They wanted to build. Yet there were fifteen years of treading water, marking time, and talk without much action.
The Lord came among the people and said, “You say it is not time to build.” Then, in Haggai 1:5 and Haggai 1:7, His basic statement is this: “Consider your ways.” As the great Shepherd of the people of God, He says, “Will you just consider your ways? Do not give the arguments; just consider the way.”
First, consider the rationale: “It is not time.” “It is not time right now for our group, our company, our fellowship. It is just not time. We do not have things together.” Circumstantially, it seems justified.
When you look around and see all the enemy attacks, it just is not time to build. Circumstantially, this can be confirmed. The world confirms it is not time for you to build. Our own logical minds say it is not time, and sometimes our hearts say it is not time.
But there is a fallacy within that statement. It will never be the time to build. There will never be favorable circumstances, with a cool breeze blowing from the southwest, when we all stand up one day, smell the fresh breeze, and say, “It is time to build. We have all got it together. Everything is in our favor. Let us build.”
It is a fallacy. The time never comes when it is convenient to build the house of God. It is never going to be convenient.
When we get into survival-instinct mode, press the emergency button, call out martial law, and bring the wagons around, there may be moments when that necessarily has to be done. But fifteen years?
Can you imagine people saying, “This is only temporary”? Have you ever heard that among us? “Hello, this is only temporary. I know we have taken a step back, but it is only temporary. I know I have taken a third job, but it is only temporary.”
“I will tell you, in a couple of years we will have the kids in school, and we will be all right.” Or, “Marvin is having triplets, but it is just temporary. I cannot come to the meetings anymore, but it is just going to be a little while.”
Oh, temporary! Fifteen years of temporary. Daisies are growing through the wagon wheels. “It is just temporary.”
“We cannot build yet. We need more manpower. We have one responsible brother; we need twenty-five responsible brothers. We need time. We need more manpower. Somebody has to be raised up. That is what we need. All we have are these guys. Lord, give us men.”
“It is temporary. As soon as we get our act together and get somebody to lead us, we will be on the way.”
I will tell you a few characteristics of the “not-the-time” fellowship. The leaders are always very, very busy. They are not idle; they are busy, because they are responsible people. They are just busy.
It is hard to find them. They do not have time to shepherd the people, though they intend to. They are very busy. Sometimes I travel to a fellowship that has invited me to speak, and they say, “Brother So-and-So is home sick tonight, Brother So-and-So is in another town working, and the other brother went on vacation.” I get the feeling I am filling in.
Everybody is circumstantially overwhelmed, running and scattering. The brothers are busy, and when the cat is away, the pigeons play. This is one of Lance’s new phrases this year, if you noticed: the cat among the pigeons.
When the cat is not among the pigeons, the pigeons go off. The saints have fallen into the mentality of the book of Judges, where everybody does what is right in his own eyes. There are no corrections. Nobody is holding up a standard, partly because the brothers feel a little guilty about holding up standards they are not maintaining.
Everybody is doing what is right in his own eyes. Occasionally, when we feel we have to correct something that is badly wrong or needs to be handled in the fellowship, a great game of hide-and-seek begins.
You know those old stuffy castles in England, where Lance grew up, with all these secret passageways? We have fellowships with so many secret labyrinths and passageways. You see Bill over there and think, “I have got to go talk to Bill. What he said was so out of the Spirit.”
You start to walk over to Billy, and he touches the fireplace, spins around, and is behind the bathroom. “Where is Bill?” Somebody says, “Oh, I saw Bill coming out of the cupboard down in the kitchen.”
You can laugh, but then somebody comes to talk to you, and you push the button to go behind the library shelf. You meet each other in the dark halls in the back and make an agreement: “All right, you do not push me, and I will not push you. You do not correct me, and I will not correct you. We will keep one another at arm’s length.” It is an unwritten law.
That is one of the characteristics of the “not-the-time” fellowship. The teaching goes on, but it is basically practical and innocuous—another word for neutral. There is no teaching on vision. “We have heard all that. Give us something practical, like how to remain sane and raise little children.”
Prayer life becomes a matter of throwing out particular life preservers for the week. You get together for prayer meeting and say, “Who is drowning this week? Sadie? Throw it out. Lord, please get Sadie out of the water.”
We are just chucking out life preservers. There is no movement, no corporate burden. “Oh, help Joe. Oh, three jobs. How can he handle them?” We are just throwing out life preservers.
There are undercurrents of accusation and dissatisfaction. Basically, leadership gets blamed for a lot of things. “They are holding down the meeting.” Imagine everybody comes in totally unprepared, and then they blame the leaders for holding down the meeting.
“It is the brothers. They do not like the Holy Spirit. If we just had freedom, we would do that.” The brothers, because they bring teaching, become the cause of the malaise. It usually gets focused wherever there is anybody to focus on. The brothers become convenient whipping boys and fellowship scapegoats.
They are standing there saying, “What did I do? All right, I will quit.” Then everyone says, “No, do not quit.”
Cliques form—this group, that group, this interest, that theological interest. All these things become undercurrents. You know something? Ninety-five percent of it is totally unsubstantiated rumor started from the throne of the enemy. It has no basis in fact, but you and I believe it. We are such suckers for that behind-the-back scheme of the enemy.
Am I talking about your company? Well, then you ought to look around. I have just been asking: how many of you have experienced those kinds of innuendos and undercurrents in a fellowship that is standing still? You just raise your hand. All right, that is about enough for me. It happens everywhere.
The Lord says, “Consider your ways.” The Lord also says, “Consider your fruits.” You work a lot and come to nothing. You bring in all your money, and it goes into a bag with holes.
Busyness and fruitlessness. Yet they still do not ask, “Why?” They have a sneaking suspicion that they are on the wrong track, but they just try to work harder so that it does not fall through their pockets too quickly.
The Lord says, “Why do you not ask Me why? Why is this going on?” Then the Lord gives them something hard to take. “You know the problems you are up against—the circumstantial problems with inflation, buying things, children? I have added to it. I have caused the drought on the land. I am trying to get your attention.”
“Will you not ask Me why? Please ask Me why. It is because of the house of God. Did you forget?” Nobody forgets; we just do not get around to it, do we? “You do not have time. It is just not the right time yet. Oh, sorry, Lord. We are always praying about it.”
“It is because of My house. It lies there as a wreck while you are building your own houses.”
Consider your ways. Consider your fruits. Consider this command. The Lord says in Haggai 1:8:
Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord.
The Lord, the gentle Shepherd, says, “Consider this. Go up to the mountain. Bring the wood. Build the temple.”
“Go up to the mountains.” I do not know what that says to you. To me, it is a simple picture. They were going up to the foothills of Lebanon, where they could get the wood, but the simple picture says that most of us, as the people of God, get into circumstantial impasses and become earthly fellowships.
We need to go up onto another plane. We need to go back into the vision we initially had. We lose it somehow in the dust of circumstances down here on earth. We become heavenly people, but with an earthbound vision—just trying to get through the day, just trying to be practical.
Without going up to the mountain, there is a lack of clarity that enables us to build.
Then it says, “Bring wood.” This is not talking about us individually collecting a bunch of sticks. They did not build the house of God with twigs.
This is not talking about people individually scattering around in the woods and coming back with some kindling. It is talking about going up to the foothills where the cedars are, cutting down the big trees, and carrying back logs.
That is corporate work. It is not enough for a few folks to gather twigs. That is not going to build the house of God. There has to be moving together. There has to be holding onto a log. Corporate logs are big; nobody can handle them alone.
How about the whole matter of corporate prayer? How can we ever move with God in corporate prayer if we are not holding that log together? It does not work when just one, two, or three people come together and the whole company is not together praying.
I am not talking legalistically about everybody being there. I mean that, basically in spirit, everybody is there. You cannot carry corporate logs with two or three people. All they can do is take little chunks off.
Pray that God will do something more. How about the whole corporate burden the Lord has for His people? People sometimes think the ministry of the Word of God is something an individual is gifted to bring forth. I tell you the truth: that is not so.
When the saints as a whole hold the log and say, “We want God’s way and God’s burden. What is God saying to us?” then God raises up Haggais and Zechariahs—people who can speak a prophetic word into the assembly.
But one man cannot hold this corporate vision, this corporate log, this burden. It is something carried together. Not everybody teaches and ministers the Word, but there is a corporate carrying of a burden.
Is it not a shame when some brother used by the Lord comes and shares a burden you know is from God and right for us, but nobody carries that thing through? It is just another teaching on Sunday. What a tremendous problem.
Who is going to carry the log of this burden? We all felt touched in our spirit about seeing it through and carrying it through. It is a big log. It is a big cedar log. It has to be carried.
Even what we might call simple things—such as incorporating the children into the life of God’s people—are corporate matters. You do not tell a couple of women, “Just get rid of the kids on Sunday morning.” When the log is carried, there is an incorporation of the children into what is going on.
It is pervasive. It involves us carrying something together at the same time, going up there together, bringing back the wood, and then building.
It is easier not to build. It is easier to live in a shell, to live on a foundation without walls, without a roof, and without furnishings. It is hard to build, is it not?
This is fair warning to any wife whose husband is interested in buying a handyman’s special house. I know some wives who went along with their husbands on those things. They are still living in the handyman’s special ten years later.
It is still a shell of a house. They still have sheets drawn between one room and another. They still have to take a bath in a sink. Once you get into a shell, you can adapt to shell life. “Ah, we do not need things like walls.”
“Honey, this is our dream house. We got it for $12,000.” “We could sell it for ten.”
I think it would be a massive move of God if you and I were thoroughly dissatisfied with the corporate shells we live in. We can adapt and get used to the place where we are.
But the Lord says, “Build.” He says, “There is only one purpose for you all coming back anyway: build so that I will be pleased and glorified.”
In the midst of self-survival, you have become self-centered. You started building your own houses, and that is all you are doing. The Lord did not say you could not live in a house. But He says, “You have forgotten Me. Your whole reason for coming back—do you not remember?—was to build the house.”
The situation was still impossible, do you not think? They did not have permission from the king to build. Their situation was impoverished. They were living in poverty. Their circumstances were worse than yours and mine will ever be.
They had a perfect right to survive. Do we not have a right to survive? When it comes down to the instinct of self-survival, does not God grant that to us? Do we not have the right to work, to succeed, to prosper, to have children, and to build homes? Of course we do.
It is an impossible situation. You cannot say to human beings, “You cannot do this. You cannot do that.” God would never say that. All He says is, “Build My house.” “God, that is impossible.”
But something amazing happened to these people in impossible circumstances:
Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him; and the people did fear before the Lord.
Then spake Haggai the Lord’s messenger in the Lord’s message unto the people, saying, I am with you, saith the Lord.
And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work in the house of the Lord of hosts, their God.
— Haggai 1:12-14
You know what happens in the midst of an impossible situation? I want to tell you that this situation was impossible. We are not talking about a possible situation that the people were unaware of. We are talking about an impossible situation.
Then the living Word of God comes and says, “Go.” Suddenly the impossible becomes possible. Within the power of the Word of God—the power that created out of nothing—when that Word is obeyed, the impossible becomes possible.
God only asks us to do the impossible. Have you ever noticed how Jesus asked people to do the impossible? He said to the man with the withered arm, “Stretch out thy hand.” The man could have said, “That is impossible. Ask me to do anything else. I will stretch out this arm.”
But Jesus told him to do the one thing it was impossible to do. In the very decision to listen to the Word, the arm came out. Jesus said to Peter, “Walk on the water.” Peter could have said, “I cannot. I do not have skis.”
But Peter stepped out within the power of the living Word. Jesus said, “Take up thy bed.” “I cannot take up my bed. It is impossible.” Yet, within the power of the living Word, the man stood up and picked up his bed.
“Feed the multitude.” But within the echoes of that Word upon the mountains, they broke the bread and fed the multitudes. It is incredible what happens when we respond in obedience to the Word of God. The impossible becomes possible.
How can you do it, folks? Here we are, circumstantially bound and overwhelmed. The enemy is upon us. We have our own personal circumstances. It is impossible—unless God speaks as a Shepherd comes alongside with that living Word, and suddenly the impossible happens.
There is a tremendous moving of the Spirit. Did you notice what it says? The Spirit stirred them up. Unless the Spirit stirs up the people, we are just wasting time.
In Zechariah, the young man who prophesied at the same time as Haggai, it is very clear why God does it this way—why God allows us to come to impossible circumstances. He allows us to come to those places so that we can see:
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
— Zechariah 4:6
Cyrus does not get the credit. Zerubbabel does not get the credit. Joshua does not get the credit. The great people do not get the credit. It was impossible until God said, “Build,” and suddenly they built, and it happened. Grace, grace. Jesus did it.
Nobody got the glory. There was no great worker who came in and did it. It was just the Spirit of God stirring up our hearts, and we did the impossible.
“How could you do it, Joe? You still have a job with such responsibility.” “I do not know. It just happened. We all started moving together. Somehow we still raised our children, and they were not hurt. As a matter of fact, children in a building situation only get blessed.”
In our impossible circumstances, somehow we worked our way through it and built what God wanted. In the process, we saw the impossible become possible.
The circumstances did not change. But the living Word of God, backed by a stirring of the Spirit, allowed the impossible to happen.
Notice a few significant points within these verses. First of all, they all moved together. Brothers and sisters, there has to be a coinciding movement of all God’s people together.
It does no good for a few people to try to move out ahead of time. There are some people in every company of believers who are ready to move, willing to sacrifice, and willing to serve God. Yet God will hold them in check until the Spirit speaks to all of us together, and we all begin to move.
There is great work to be done and great sacrifice to be made. Do you not find in your heart a willingness to sacrifice? “I do not care about money. I do not care about—well, I really do care about God’s work. But I need to find two or three others who would say the same thing: ‘I do not care.’”
When we work together, things happen. But when you try to do it yourself, first of all it cannot work, and it does not work. It is frustrating. You take two steps forward, nobody goes with you, and you collapse in despair.
But they all moved together—all the remnant. The Spirit of God moved. That is a miracle. A flock does not normally move that way. How did the Shepherd get the whole flock to move at once, this group bent on self-survival?
Second, experientially, notice that this passage first says the people obeyed the Lord, and then, two verses later, says that the Spirit moved them.
Theologically, we know the Spirit moved them, and that is how they could obey under the influence of the living Word of God. But experientially, or subjectively, I want to make this point because many people have a false spiritual mentality: “I will obey when the Spirit makes me feel like it.”
I believe it is the other way around. In their experience, they probably committed themselves in raw obedience against impossible circumstances: “We will go.” As they started to go, they felt the Spirit stirring them.
We are so super-spiritual. “Lord, the Spirit has to move me, and then I will witness.” You will never witness until you obey God, and then, when you go, you sense the Spirit moving. Experientially, it works the other way around.
In fact, it is the Spirit who gives you the grace to obey. But we have to realize that sometimes obedience is simply straight obedience to the Word of God. No nice feelings preceding our movement are guaranteed in the contract.
Also notice that Zerubbabel and Joshua were mentioned. There cannot be a moving without the leaders moving. There cannot be a movement without the leaders moving.
Fourth, as soon as they began to move, they sensed the one great confirmation, affirmation, and raison d’être. The moment they began to move, they experienced the greatest thing, and they knew what they had been missing.
The Lord said, “I am with you.” They suddenly experienced His precious, moving, gracing presence in their midst. What a wonderful experience.
Everybody here, I know, has experienced in some way—either personally or corporately—a moment when we began to move in obedience to God, and suddenly our barometer of “I am with you” triggered. We knew God was with us. He was before us, clearing the way.
Historically, the Samaritans came around again as soon as they started building. They sent off another letter to Babylon, and a letter came back: “Let them build. We looked back in the old records and found that Cyrus gave them permission. Let them build, and give them supplies.”
The whole thing backfired. When they started marching forward in faith and obedience, the gates of hell had to give way. But it was that impossible obedience in the midst of the will of God that broke them through.
The rest of the book of Haggai did not end there. As they began to move in obedience, the Lord began to adjust their way. As soon as His presence came into their midst, He began to adjust them.
They had a couple of problems they did not quite realize, and God exposed those problems as they began to work. One of the problems is mentioned in Haggai 2:3-9.
Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes as nothing?
Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the Lord, and work: for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts,
According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, and My Spirit abode in the midst of you: fear ye not.
For thus saith the Lord of hosts: Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land;
And I will shake all nations; and the precious things of all nations shall come; and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.
The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine, saith the Lord of hosts.
The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, saith the Lord of hosts; and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.
— Haggai 2:3-9
I will tell you what probably was the real problem behind the cessation and interruption of the work of the house of God for fifteen years. These people had a heart for God. It was not merely materialism that distracted them. That was a partial cause, but the deeper issue was this: they saw what they were doing as a small thing.
Their vision was too narrow and too small. They thought to themselves, after building the foundation, “Well, this is not much. This is not much.” It is easy to get distracted from the pursuit of the kingdom of God when we have a small vision of our own role in it.
“What was this? Fifty thousand of us came back and built this. So what? It is nothing. It is not important.” So, in response, they attended to their own business.
Oh, brothers and sisters, I wish we could see how important it is to build the house of God. That means God has to give it to us. God has to show us how much He wants us to build the house of God. Our vision is just so small.
God spoke to His children and said, “I will tell you what is important, saints. It does not matter how big the house is. It does not matter how much money you have to build it. Here is the important thing: I am with you.”
That is what really counts. It may be a little foundation. Maybe the stones are just you and me. “I am with you,” says the Lord. “Take courage. I am with you. Take courage. I am with you.” Do you notice the Lord repeating something?
“I am with you. Take courage.” He says, “Listen, this is a day of small things. Do not despise it.” That is what Zechariah said. It is a day of small things, but from this God is preparing something.
You are building this little thing over here, and you have no idea. A shaking is coming, and suddenly things are going to be poured in here. It is a time of preparation. You have to hold onto true vision.
Even if we are building small and building slowly, we are building it right. One day, in the snap of a finger, in the twinkling of an eye, a tremendous outpouring will fall upon us. There needs to be a prepared place to receive the glory, the wealth of the nations, and the outpouring.
Sometimes we have these little companies of believers, and we believe they are going nowhere. But at the right time, if we are prepared, the glory of the Lord will be seen in these places.
The question is: do we have the presence of God with us? How small are you building? How feeble are the people? How well-known are the ministries among you? Who is your Zerubbabel?
The question is whether we are doing what God is telling us to do. Haggai would say, “I am with you. I want you to build faithfully. I want you to build without compromise.”
Is it not great that these people did not let the Samaritans come in and build with them? They built without compromise. That is why it takes so long sometimes. You take a step forward, but then you notice compromise, and the Lord says, “No, no, no.”
We have to get straightened out and rebuild a little more, and then there is more compromise. We decide to take a shortcut on one of the walls, and the Lord says, “No, no, no, no, no.”
It goes so slowly. It is so tedious. It takes so long to shepherd a whole flock of people together, moving them in the direction the Lord wants them to go. But it is all preparation. It is all preparation.
It is learning how to rule and reign, how to pray, how to carry burdens, and how to do these things that perhaps we despise at times as being small. It does not matter. One day, you and I will have to stand. Either we will be ashamed because we are outside of what God has done, or we will be in the midst, shouting, “Grace, grace,” in the celebration.
There is so much more to say on this subject and from the book of Haggai, but let me conclude by having us think about the Shepherd and what He is saying to us. Would you bow your heads together, please?
If you have a heart to serve the Lord, and you are joined with a people who, by His grace, have a heart to serve the Lord, you can expect times of circumstantial overwhelming—coming to an impasse, coming to times of tremendous interference from the enemy, and tremendous circumstantial problems that make the building impossible.
When those times come, rather than simply circling the wagons and waiting for fifteen years, we need to assemble ourselves together for a special season and consider our ways.
When we come to these impasses, we need to gather together. Oh, if we could just get God’s people together to listen to what God would say to us, to consider our ways, and to realize that even our instincts for self-survival are self-centered.
We need to evaluate our excuses, check honestly on the barometer of “I am with you,” and listen for the rhema, the Word of God, for the whole group.
It may come to an old man, as Haggai was thought to be. It may come to a young man, as Zechariah was thought to be. But we need to listen for the rhema to come among us—that which can make the impossible suddenly possible, that which can suddenly move a whole corporate people by the Spirit.
Can the Shepherd restore the assembly that you dwell with? Can He move us past the impasse when there seems no way to go?
We listen for the rhema. Once we hear it, we obey what may sound impossible. Obey, obey, obey.
The Lord will push back the gates of hell to accomplish His work. We are in a work right now that is an issue in the universe and in the unseen. It is of tremendous importance.
If we can see that and realize that it is impossible to build the house of God, then we will understand that only the Spirit can stir us up and grant us that common obedience, where suddenly those brothers and sisters we have been with for a long time are pulling together.
What a miracle—for sheep to pull together, to work together, to stop the innuendos and accusations, to sacrifice together, to build together, to carry burdens together, and to bring down the big corporate log.
Oh God, You are the great Shepherd of the sheep. We all find ourselves in various companies of Your people, in various conditions. Some, by Your gracious outpouring, are moving on. Some have come to a valley of impasse.
But Lord, we would listen to Your Word. We would gather together as a family meeting and consider our ways—consider our desire for all that this world has, consider our affluence, consider our excuses, consider our circumstances—and then listen for what You have to say to us.
We know there is a cross involved. In the end, Your Spirit stirs us and gives us grace to go through death and into abundant life.
We would obey. At least, as sheep, we can do that much when we hear the Shepherd call. Lord, speak to us as Your people. We need recovery among our assemblies. We need recovery among the people of God.
Without excuse, without compromise, by Your Spirit, speak to us, gentle Shepherd. In Jesus’ name. Amen.